Products
Products essential to the life of the colonists on Arda can be obtained from animal fats: lighting, soaps, and lubricants.
Because the health of the colonists is directly related to their cleanliness, soaps are vital to the wellness of the colony. Soap is a sodium or potassium salt of a fatty acid. Soap can be made with a simple process. After having rendered and cleaned the fat, there are only two more main steps to making soap: making the wood ash lye, and mixing the fats and lye together into a solution, and then boiling them to make the soap. Only primitive materials are needed; you can make soap simply with animal fats andwood ashes, which contain the alkali potassium carbonate. To make the lye, you place wood ashes on a stone slab in a bottomless barrel. The stone slab should have a lip carved in it to collect the solution, which will then drip off into a collector below the barrel. Pour water on top of the ashes until a brownish liquid oozes out and collects in the stone. Make sure the ashes do not mix with the brown solution. Now that the lye is prepared, the lye and the fats should be put together and boiled, usually for about 6-8 hours (see fig. 4&5). After boiling these together, it should cool for several days. Next common salt is thrown in, causing the soap to separate into two layers, with hard soap ready for use on top. The Leblanc process of making soap is slightly more advanced, based on an alkaline hydrolysis reaction (R represents the hydrocarbon chain):
(Fat + Caustic Soda --> Soap + glyceride)
The different types of fat yield different types of soap. Bar soap is invaluable for keeping clean and consequently healthy.
Fig. 4 Saponification
Fig. 5 Soapmaking